Currency Boards and External Shocks

📖 The Scoop

Currency boards are institutions that replace central banks and ensure that a country's currency can be purchased at a given price (or exchange rate) upon demand, thus imposing a fixed exchange rate on international transactions. These systems have their advantages--they prohibit the use of liberal monetary policies that lead to high inflation--but they can also limit the ability of an economy to react to changes in international economic conditions if foreign currency reserves are depleted. Such threats to the stability of the financial sector may stem from economic events that originate outside the national economy (external shocks), such as the fallout from the Mexican peso devaluation in late 1994. This paper presents the proceedings of a World Bank roundtable discussion held in 1996 to examine the impact of external shocks and to address the challenges countries face when operating under a currency-board system of currency exchange, with a particular emphasis on how certain costs can be minimized while maximizing the gains. Special attention is given to the currency-board systems in Argentina and Hong Kong.

Genre: Business & Economics / International / General (fancy, right?)